The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams

The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold, but its god is dead and the once grand city is crumbling to pieces around the few survivors. Tormalin the Oathless has no desire to sit around and wait to die so he abandons Ebora to be among the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine. When eccentric scholar, Lady Vincenza de Grazon, takes him on as a hired sword, he eagerly agrees even when the job involves facing down monsters and retrieving ancient artefacts. Even when they are joined by a fugitive witch with a tendency to set things on fire, Tormalin has no intention of ever returning home.  But not everyone is as willing to let Ebora fade away, and Tormalin is slowly drawn into a tangled mystery centuries in the making.

The Ninth Rain is a hefty classical-style high fantasy, and the first book of the Winnowing Flame trilogy. If I'm being honest, I found it quite hard to get into at the beginning and wasn't entirely convinced about the whole concept of alien invasions in a fantasy world. Also, there was a LOT crammed into a few short chapters with witches, vampires, monster plants, and aliens. And yet, once the story really got going, it all kind of works. The world-building is rich and detailed and so cleverly done so that it fades into the background - you always know what you need to know, but the story never gets bogged down by exposition. 

Also, I really liked the diverse and lovable characters, particularly the three protagonists who are the heart of the story, and their experiences give The Ninth Rain its depth and complexity. I rooted for all of them, and the banter between them made me giggle. Plot-wise, like I said, The Ninth Rain started slow and the 'OMG, I have to know what happens next!' page-turning feeling didn't hit me until about a quarter into the book. However, once that happened, I flew through the chapters as the characters became more and more entangled in a web of magic, prophecy, and ancient mysteries.

Original, fun to read and full of diverse and likeable characters, The Ninth Rain is a great start to an exciting fantasy series. Get through the first few chapters, and you'll be rewarded with a story full of heart, humour, and heroics.

Recommended For: Fans of classical fantasy full of quests, magical creatures, ancient enemies, and heroes you can root for.

Read On: The next book in the trilogy is The Bitter Twins. If you love epic fantasy with a lot of heart, you'll like the Amra Thetys series by Michael McClung - the first book is The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids.

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

During the madness of China's Cultural Revolution, a young physicist is exiled to a remote and secretive installation in the Khingan Mountains. There, she sends a desperate message to the stars. Years later, a scientist working with cutting-edge nanotechnology is troubled by unsettling visions and finds himself drawn into a strange video game set on the chaotic and alien world of Trisolaris. A war is coming, and it seems like science itself will be the first to fall.

The Three-Body Problem is a slow-burning and absorbing hard science fiction novel that is all the more chilling for its matter-of-fact tone. The standout aspect of this book for me was the plot. Nothing makes sense at first - there's no info-dumps here, only small hints -  but I quickly found myself absorbed as the the two narratives interweaved ever more tightly and more and more of the mystery was revealed. The world-building, too, was fascinating. Not so much Earth but Trisolaris - an intriguing and complex alien world completely unlike our own. 

While the absorbing plot and the rich world-building drew me in, I found the characters disappointing. The Three-Body Problem is clearly a story driven by plot and the characters do little more than get swept up in it. They also lack emotional depth. This may be a deliberate choice - the book has a matter-of-fact and formal tone which echoes the hard science behind it - or may be due to the Chinese writing style. Either way, I would have liked to have seen more emotional depth because I love to read about complicated characters facing difficult decisions.

At its heart, The Three-Body Problem is an absorbing science fiction book with a heavy emphasis on the science and a chilling mystery at its core. It asks difficult questions about who controls the direction of scientific progress, and the role of culture and politics in shaping science. I don't read a lot of hard science fiction - a lot of it goes well over my head - but this book has convinced me to read more.

Recommended For: Fans of hard science fiction who like their science fiction with a heavy dose of science fact

Read On: The next book in the trilogy is The Dark Forest. Another science fiction book crammed full of science fact include Seven Eves by Neal Stephenson.